“Love you, Neesh,” I say.
Pale morning light seeps beneath the slats of the blinds, throwing stripes onto my rumpled bedspread. Beside me, Emme’s breath is slow and sweet, and her long lashes cast shadows onto her cheek. She hooks a thumb underneath her stack of beaded bracelets and gently snaps them against her wrist. It strikes me that this is likely the moment when she’s beginning to conceive of me as a whole person—with agency and hidden desires and an unfamiliar past—and not only as her mother. It strikes me, too, that this phenomenon might be more difficult for me to process than it is for her.
“I’m sorry that you didn’t love Dad like you loved Reid,” Emme says.
My chest hollows out. “I did love your dad—I really did—but I think what I felt for Reid was... less complicated. Reid just saw me for who I was. Does that make sense?”
“That must be a cool feeling.”
“Itwascool.” Thirty years later, it still is. It’s the vibrational attunement that also scares me. But I’m unwilling to share that fear with my daughter, to pass my cynicism down like a tattered heirloom. I want her to be aware of people’s limitations, but I still want her heart to stay open in the way mine hasn’t.
“I’m sure you’ll experience something like that one day, if you want to,” I say. “And I think it’ll come easier to youthan it did to me. You’re already so much braver than I was. You don’t need Auntie Neesh’s pep talks to help you.”
“I’ve always seen you as brave.” Emme shrugs, like she didn’t just short-circuit my brain.
I force Emme back to bed for a few hours, and when she wakes up a second time, I set out to model boldness—on one front, at least—and tell her about theResonancejob. I explain that we would work together to figure out a situation that feels right for her when I’m gone, whether that’s staying with my parents or with James or some combination. Despite the risk avoidance that I showcased last night, I realize I do still want this job. That it’s within my power to make this opportunity suit my life, or at least try to.
Still, it’s not justmylife, and I want Emme to have a voice. “But if you don’t want me to do this—”
She cuts me off. “Mom.” She rests a hand on my arm. “You know I’m not a baby anymore, right?”
I laugh. “I do and I don’t.”
“Well. Do.”
I spend the next hour on the phone with Hayes, gathering as much information as I can about the project. Portrait sessions would take place in a month, tours would kick off right after, and no, I would not have to sleep inside a moving vehicle. I run my proposed plan by him: that I’ll photograph all the bands here but follow just one on tour in August.
“And I want ten percent more in compensation,” I add.
“Love that for you, but the comp is locked in. Trust me, I’ve pushed as much as I could while still retaining a scrap of dignity.”
“Then I want to maintain copyright for my images and set up a gallery show.” I sit up a little straighter, even though he can’t see me. “And then I want to make a book.”
“Well,” Hayes says, and there is both venom and honey in his voice. “There she is. That is the smartest thing you’ve said in years.”
When I hang up, I ride the momentum and do a deep dive into each of the acts I would be documenting. It’s a motley group—one is a confessional singer-songwriter duo, another is a scrappy three-piece punk band outfitted in kilts and knee socks (“Like Dog From Hell without a rabies shot,” a write-up says), and the last is a sultry, Wiccan-inflected shoegaze quartet. I’m a little surprised that I find all their music exciting, even groundbreaking, and I’m moved by the fact that every artist involved is a woman, which also makes the prospect of spending time on the road much more palatable.
An hour later, Hayes texts me:They’ll do it.
“Yes,” I say out loud. And then, “Fuck.”
Forgetting myself, I open up to my messages with Reid—he’s the first person I want to share this news with. My fingers hover over the keyboard, buzzing to type the words.
But I know I can’t contact him. I’m the one who pulled that door shut.
When I head downstairs to share the plan with Emme, I pass behind her and see she’s scrolling on Instagram. I can’t help but peek at her screen when I glimpse an unmistakably familiar face, though the snow-white skin and impossibly shiny hair are in partial shadow. The geotag is Bemelmans Bar. Emme taps to Gracie’s next story. This one shows three albums fanned out on a hotel bedspread.Generation Records haul, the text over the image reads. Next is the amethyst slab that lords over the entrance to the gem hall at the Natural History Museum, its hollowed-out core glistening and refracting in a way that makes my breath catch.
Surely, this is a coincidence. Surely, Reid is not intentionally retracing our steps, visiting all the spots I took him to thirty years ago. Surely, Reid is too hurt to reminisce about our shared past, to remind himself of the future we might have had together, had I not bulldozed right over it.
I muzzle the jolt of hope that gallops across my chest.These are all New York institutions, I tell myself.Reid and I don’t own them.
But once again, I’m lying to myself. If I let myself be honest, this can only be one thing: proof that Reid is still searching for me. But this time, I need to find him.
Emme notices me, noticing her screen. She offers me the barest glance and casually swipes out of Instagram. “Busy day,” she says.
XIX
In the afternoon, Emme comes into my office and tells me we need to do something fun. “To celebrate your music job thing.”
